Emmy Award Winning Cagney & Lacey One of the Best Shows of the 1980s

Cagney & Lacey was an award winning television series that ran for six seasons from 1982 to 1988. The show starred Sharon Gless as Christine Cagney and Tyne Daly as Mary Beth Lacey. Cagney & Lacey was set in New York City and a fictional precinct, but the show was filmed in Los Angeles.

Cagney & Lacey was more than just another cop drama. It was a show about working women who were trying to balance a career and a personal life at home. Cagney & Lacey became a role model for the women's movement and was a show that real working women could relate to the everyday lives of Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey. The series was about two female detectives working in a predominantly male workplace and the private lives they tried to live at home. Christine was a single career woman looking to meet the right guy. Mary Beth was a happily married wife and mother with two young boys and a hard working husband.

The earliest version of Cagney & Lacey was created in 1974 by Barbara Avedon and Barbara Corday and was set to be a full length feature film, but was turned into a television movie in 1981 by Barney Rosenzweig who was married to Corday at the time. Tyne Daly got the role of Mary Beth Lacey and Loretta Swit, of M.A.S.H. fame, played Christine Cagney. The movie received great ratings and filming of the television show started in 1982. Swit had already moved on to M.A.S.H., and Meg Foster was cast as Christine. CBS executives were not happy with Foster and were going to cancel the show if Foster wasn't replaced. Sharon Gless, Rosenzweig's original choice, was cast as Christine in 1982.

Cagney & Lacey was plagued with low ratings in 1983 and CBS canceled the series. Thousand of unhappy views sent letters to CBS in a campaign to bring back the show. Many of these women were the exact same demographic that the show's advertises were looking for. With Rosenzweig's help, the viewers organized a nationwide letter writing campaign encouraging fans to write to their local newspapers to bring back the show.

The National Organization of Women (NOW), MS Magazine and Gloria Steinem helped to champion the campaign. Surprisingly, CBS reversed their decision to cancel the show and the show ran for four more seasons.

The series was averaging millions of viewers per episode and the showed earned 36 Emmy nominations and 14 wins over the course of the series. Each year, either Sharon Gless or Tyne Daley won an Emmy in the Best Dramatic Actress category for a total of six wins between them.

Cagney & Lacey: The Menopause Years which is a compilation of the 1994 and 1995 television movies will be released on DVD in August 2009. Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly continue to receive mail from viewers about how the show changed their lives and how they are enjoying watching the original episodes with their children today.

Source: www.cagneyandlacey.com